Of crossfaces and (smooth) criminals: part one.
Wanted to write this since Leaving Neverland came out more than a year ago, but couldn't find the time to finish it properly. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the shelter-in-place mandate from the city and state government, however, I suddenly have all the time in the world. Plus, my perspective on this topic has been reinforced because the Season Two premiere of the Dark Side of the Ring docu-series was recently released on YouTube in stunning fashion (i.e. free, unannounced and days before it was actually premiering on television).
So, for your reading pleasure, here goes an attempt to connect two seemingly unrelated subjects to frame one central argument: should we still celebrate our heroes when they do unheroic deeds?
(Spoiler alert: No, we shouldn't.)
I never thought I'd say pro wrestling is an entertaining product to watch in this day and age but, well, here we are.
I arrived at this conclusion as I left our apartment home one Friday night in November, having just finished watching Roman Reigns, the most polarizing figure in the industry's recent history, challenge the then-reigning WWE Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura, my current favorite performer whose fame spans both ends of the Pacific. The two of them wrestled what turned out to be a really solid match that got the live television audience on the edge of their seats, even those who were fully committed to heckling Roman the whole time. That's usually a pretty good indicator of how talented someone is: if they make you suspend your disbelief long enough that they get you to actually pay attention to what they're doing inside the ring, they're doing their job correctly.
What a time to be a fan of this, too! There are now entire locker rooms all over the world full of these talented athletes who can put on a great show at any moment's notice, and those shows are more accessible now to their respective fan bases than ever before. Whether you tune in on cable TV every Wednesday night, subscribe to a promotion's streaming service or YouTube channel (or both), or shell out a couple of bucks to go see them live, you'll never run out of options. And with the rapid changing of the times, especially in the past fifty years alone, the crossover appeal of the sport has grown to be undeniable; some of the larger-than-life personalities in the business have branched out and became marquee stars in cinema (Hulk Hogan,The Rock Dwayne Johnson, Batista, John Cena), reality television (John Morrison, The Bella twins), music (Chris Jericho) or MMA (Brock Lesnar), while the household names in those same professions have parlayed their own success into full-time pro wrestling careers (MMA's Ken Shamrock and Ronda Rousey, reality show contestants Mike Mizanin The Miz and Kacy Catanzaro, movie star David Arquette, and the NFL's Pat McAfee and Rob Gronkowski, among many others).
Every now and then I would think to myself, when else was professional wrestling so cool, so in vogue that you can talk about it openly and excitedly with just about anyone? Since I wasn't born yet during the Golden Era and hadn't watched during the Attitude Era, my mind immediately retrieves memories of when I first became a fan: the period of time between 2002-2008 now popularly dubbed the Ruthless Aggression Era:
For me, those were the good ol' days. Never mind the fact I missed the peak of D-X, the nWo, Austin 3:16, Goldberg, the American Badass and "If you suh-meeeeelllll... what the Rock... is... cookin'." (I could binge-watch everything now, thanks to the WWE Network.) I was fortunate enough, though, to bask in the greatness that was the Doctor of Thuganomics, Evolution, "Well... here comes the pain!", Goldberg (yes, he was there too), "¡Viva la raza!" and the Rabid Wolverine...
And then all of a sudden, almost on cue, my heart would sink as I am reminded of why I shouldn't be too emotionally invested in this stuff to begin with.
I will never forget where I was that day, when I found out Chris Benoit died.
During the long break from mid-morning until our next class at mid-afternoon, while I was still a college freshman at UST in my first semester, I snuck in some time to surf the Internet on one of the Macs inside the Benavides Library (the smartphone and 3G both didn't exist yet, by the way) and check out the latest news. The headline hit me like a ton of friggin' bricks: WWE Superstar Chris Benoit Found Dead. Next thing I know, my mood drastically changed; I know this to be true because I can distinctly remember not talking to everybody after lunch, and I mean everybody -- even my bully classmates who took advantage of my indifferent demeanor to sneak in some verbal cheapshots. I just wasn't in the mood to deal with people, frankly, especially when my teenage idol passed away.
I was drawn to him the most, out of everyone I saw when I started getting hooked on SmackDown every Friday night on channel 9. Sure, there were plenty more genetic freaks and comedic personas in the roster, but Chris Benoit was an in-your-face, take-on-all-comers, no-B.S. wrestler. Not a sports-entertainer, as the WWE would want you to refer to their talents, but wrestler -- in every sense of the word -- and that's why he stood out. What he lacked in size and stature, he made up in technique and intensity. And even though everyone knows pro wrestling is pretty much all "fake" (i.e. choreographed), he was the type of performer that would still make you believe he can actually bring opponents twice his size down to their knees, throw them over his head at will and make them beg for mercy as he sinks in his patented submission hold, the Crippler Crossface.
I picked the right time to jump on his bandwagon, it seems, as I watched his glorious ascent to the pinnacle of the business back in '03-'04 with my own eyes: from tapping A-Train out at a random pay-per-view, to putting Paul Heyman in a Sharpshooter while being fed soap by John Cena, which led to him entering first in the Royal Rumble in what was seen as an impossible situation, then going bell-to-bell to win the match and earn a title shot, all the way to the main event of WrestleMania XX at Madison Square Garden where he held his own against two future Hall of Famers, ultimately winning the World Heavyweight Championship -- with a Crossface tapout finish, no less! -- and sharing the ring with his real-life best friend Eddie Guerrero, himself the WWE Champion, and his family (off-the-air) as confetti rained down to close an unforgettable show.
Okay, okay, nerd alert. I realize a ton of gibberish flew over your head just now, so... my bad. Here's everything you need to know about that moment, in a little over three minutes:
Soak that in for a second. You just saw a man being christened THE man, the top dog of the leading organization in the entire industry, being awarded the equivalent of the Larry O'Brien trophy in basketball, the Stanley Cup in ice hockey or the World Cup in soccer, and his first instinctual reaction is to cry. Chris Benoit realizes his "eighteen-year odyssey," as the legendary announcer Jim Ross so eloquently put it, has led him to the very top of his craft, and all his dues are now paid in full. He cried as he embraced his best friend in the center of the ring, who had been right there by his side on the same journey he's on. He cried so hard, his best friend had to implore him to raise his arms and his title to celebrate the big win. To top it all off, Chris' family -- who all dressed up for the occasion and witnessed everything from ringside -- would be invited inside the ropes as the show went off-the-air to share in this celebration, and he kisses his youngest son Daniel with his wife Nancy in tow in a timeless moment that still frames can never do justice:
How could anyone not root for him after all of that? I sure did, and I'm glad he won. I won that night, too, and I don't mean it figuratively; I actually made a bet with my younger brother -- whom I converted into being a fan -- that Chris Benoit would be the new World Champion, while he was certain the title wasn't going anywhere. Needless to say, by the end of the night, Benoit had the Big Gold Belt on his shoulder while I had a big gold five-peso coin in my palm. (Believe me, five Philippine pesos amounted to a lot back in the day.) And since then I made sure I never, ever skipped his matches no matter where they were placed on the card, because I knew even if the rest of the show sucked, as long as he's wrestling then at least he would never disappoint...
Fast forward to June of 2007, and I was disappointed when he (uncharacteristically) no-showed the pay-per-view where he was slated to add one more championship victory to his stellar career, yet also hoped that nothing bad happened to him and what led him to miss his match is something he can recover from. The discovery of his corpse the next day by local authorities, however, swiftly dispelled that hope, and I was understandably floored when I found out he was gone. Then, just when you think the situation couldn't be any more tragic, the report mentioned that the dead bodies of his wife Nancy and their son Daniel were also found in the same premises. And damn it, that stung really bad. Not just him, but his wife and son too... all three of them, who shared in that magical moment three years back... are now all dead. There's only one question to ask at that point: what deviant, perverted and remorseless human being would do such a thing as kill a loving family?
As the tributes poured in throughout the next couple of hours, so would the details of the investigation into what happened at the Benoit household come into sharper focus. What the authorities discovered threw everyone off guard, in what became the biggest sucker punch to both wrestlers and fans, and the horrific details of this tragedy are so jarring that people are still left perplexed, if not completely shell-shocked -- even to the point of a film crew making a documentary about it in 2020, nearly thirteen years later, to lay the facts down once and for all.
Talk about a pro wrestling swerve, huh. Who would've ever thought that the person behind the murder of the Benoit family... was Chris Benoit?
. . .
(To be continued)
So, for your reading pleasure, here goes an attempt to connect two seemingly unrelated subjects to frame one central argument: should we still celebrate our heroes when they do unheroic deeds?
(Spoiler alert: No, we shouldn't.)
 |
| Photo credits: deadline.com |
. . .
I never thought I'd say pro wrestling is an entertaining product to watch in this day and age but, well, here we are.
I arrived at this conclusion as I left our apartment home one Friday night in November, having just finished watching Roman Reigns, the most polarizing figure in the industry's recent history, challenge the then-reigning WWE Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura, my current favorite performer whose fame spans both ends of the Pacific. The two of them wrestled what turned out to be a really solid match that got the live television audience on the edge of their seats, even those who were fully committed to heckling Roman the whole time. That's usually a pretty good indicator of how talented someone is: if they make you suspend your disbelief long enough that they get you to actually pay attention to what they're doing inside the ring, they're doing their job correctly.
What a time to be a fan of this, too! There are now entire locker rooms all over the world full of these talented athletes who can put on a great show at any moment's notice, and those shows are more accessible now to their respective fan bases than ever before. Whether you tune in on cable TV every Wednesday night, subscribe to a promotion's streaming service or YouTube channel (or both), or shell out a couple of bucks to go see them live, you'll never run out of options. And with the rapid changing of the times, especially in the past fifty years alone, the crossover appeal of the sport has grown to be undeniable; some of the larger-than-life personalities in the business have branched out and became marquee stars in cinema (Hulk Hogan,
Every now and then I would think to myself, when else was professional wrestling so cool, so in vogue that you can talk about it openly and excitedly with just about anyone? Since I wasn't born yet during the Golden Era and hadn't watched during the Attitude Era, my mind immediately retrieves memories of when I first became a fan: the period of time between 2002-2008 now popularly dubbed the Ruthless Aggression Era:
 |
| Photo credits: wallpapercave.com |
For me, those were the good ol' days. Never mind the fact I missed the peak of D-X, the nWo, Austin 3:16, Goldberg, the American Badass and "If you suh-meeeeelllll... what the Rock... is... cookin'." (I could binge-watch everything now, thanks to the WWE Network.) I was fortunate enough, though, to bask in the greatness that was the Doctor of Thuganomics, Evolution, "Well... here comes the pain!", Goldberg (yes, he was there too), "¡Viva la raza!" and the Rabid Wolverine...
And then all of a sudden, almost on cue, my heart would sink as I am reminded of why I shouldn't be too emotionally invested in this stuff to begin with.
. . .
I will never forget where I was that day, when I found out Chris Benoit died.
During the long break from mid-morning until our next class at mid-afternoon, while I was still a college freshman at UST in my first semester, I snuck in some time to surf the Internet on one of the Macs inside the Benavides Library (the smartphone and 3G both didn't exist yet, by the way) and check out the latest news. The headline hit me like a ton of friggin' bricks: WWE Superstar Chris Benoit Found Dead. Next thing I know, my mood drastically changed; I know this to be true because I can distinctly remember not talking to everybody after lunch, and I mean everybody -- even my bully classmates who took advantage of my indifferent demeanor to sneak in some verbal cheapshots. I just wasn't in the mood to deal with people, frankly, especially when my teenage idol passed away.
 |
| Photo credits: depor.com |
I was drawn to him the most, out of everyone I saw when I started getting hooked on SmackDown every Friday night on channel 9. Sure, there were plenty more genetic freaks and comedic personas in the roster, but Chris Benoit was an in-your-face, take-on-all-comers, no-B.S. wrestler. Not a sports-entertainer, as the WWE would want you to refer to their talents, but wrestler -- in every sense of the word -- and that's why he stood out. What he lacked in size and stature, he made up in technique and intensity. And even though everyone knows pro wrestling is pretty much all "fake" (i.e. choreographed), he was the type of performer that would still make you believe he can actually bring opponents twice his size down to their knees, throw them over his head at will and make them beg for mercy as he sinks in his patented submission hold, the Crippler Crossface.
I picked the right time to jump on his bandwagon, it seems, as I watched his glorious ascent to the pinnacle of the business back in '03-'04 with my own eyes: from tapping A-Train out at a random pay-per-view, to putting Paul Heyman in a Sharpshooter while being fed soap by John Cena, which led to him entering first in the Royal Rumble in what was seen as an impossible situation, then going bell-to-bell to win the match and earn a title shot, all the way to the main event of WrestleMania XX at Madison Square Garden where he held his own against two future Hall of Famers, ultimately winning the World Heavyweight Championship -- with a Crossface tapout finish, no less! -- and sharing the ring with his real-life best friend Eddie Guerrero, himself the WWE Champion, and his family (off-the-air) as confetti rained down to close an unforgettable show.
Okay, okay, nerd alert. I realize a ton of gibberish flew over your head just now, so... my bad. Here's everything you need to know about that moment, in a little over three minutes:
Soak that in for a second. You just saw a man being christened THE man, the top dog of the leading organization in the entire industry, being awarded the equivalent of the Larry O'Brien trophy in basketball, the Stanley Cup in ice hockey or the World Cup in soccer, and his first instinctual reaction is to cry. Chris Benoit realizes his "eighteen-year odyssey," as the legendary announcer Jim Ross so eloquently put it, has led him to the very top of his craft, and all his dues are now paid in full. He cried as he embraced his best friend in the center of the ring, who had been right there by his side on the same journey he's on. He cried so hard, his best friend had to implore him to raise his arms and his title to celebrate the big win. To top it all off, Chris' family -- who all dressed up for the occasion and witnessed everything from ringside -- would be invited inside the ropes as the show went off-the-air to share in this celebration, and he kisses his youngest son Daniel with his wife Nancy in tow in a timeless moment that still frames can never do justice:
 |
| Photo credits: https://medium.com/@ChrisBrosnahan/the-chris-benoit-story-10-years-on-52cd1bca62a4 |
How could anyone not root for him after all of that? I sure did, and I'm glad he won. I won that night, too, and I don't mean it figuratively; I actually made a bet with my younger brother -- whom I converted into being a fan -- that Chris Benoit would be the new World Champion, while he was certain the title wasn't going anywhere. Needless to say, by the end of the night, Benoit had the Big Gold Belt on his shoulder while I had a big gold five-peso coin in my palm. (Believe me, five Philippine pesos amounted to a lot back in the day.) And since then I made sure I never, ever skipped his matches no matter where they were placed on the card, because I knew even if the rest of the show sucked, as long as he's wrestling then at least he would never disappoint...
Fast forward to June of 2007, and I was disappointed when he (uncharacteristically) no-showed the pay-per-view where he was slated to add one more championship victory to his stellar career, yet also hoped that nothing bad happened to him and what led him to miss his match is something he can recover from. The discovery of his corpse the next day by local authorities, however, swiftly dispelled that hope, and I was understandably floored when I found out he was gone. Then, just when you think the situation couldn't be any more tragic, the report mentioned that the dead bodies of his wife Nancy and their son Daniel were also found in the same premises. And damn it, that stung really bad. Not just him, but his wife and son too... all three of them, who shared in that magical moment three years back... are now all dead. There's only one question to ask at that point: what deviant, perverted and remorseless human being would do such a thing as kill a loving family?
As the tributes poured in throughout the next couple of hours, so would the details of the investigation into what happened at the Benoit household come into sharper focus. What the authorities discovered threw everyone off guard, in what became the biggest sucker punch to both wrestlers and fans, and the horrific details of this tragedy are so jarring that people are still left perplexed, if not completely shell-shocked -- even to the point of a film crew making a documentary about it in 2020, nearly thirteen years later, to lay the facts down once and for all.
Talk about a pro wrestling swerve, huh. Who would've ever thought that the person behind the murder of the Benoit family... was Chris Benoit?
. . .
(To be continued)
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